Andor's Trail

Bounced this off of Zukero in a private message, but haven't heard back from him yet. I initially offered to write dialogue based on my history in writing, but as I started to dig into various Threads and previous ideas already considered (and I tell you, that is a serious undertaking.... there is so much information in just these two threads alone .... .... that it would take me weeks just to catch myself up to speed on what's what.


That said... I realized as I was reading that I have the opportunity to invest my time in a different direction --- Translating the game into Traditional Chinese so as to bring in a new crop of players altogether. I think this actually would be the better use of time, as new players might actually be programmers with skills I lack... who might be able to take the game further than I could with my meager abilities.

I am American, published in a few newspapers and off-beat journals. My grasp of English is above average. My wife is Taiwanese, She is a teacher and fully capable of working with me towards making the game workable in this language.

My real question here is --- does doing translation work only involve dialogue / items / button choices... or does it likewise involve the programming language and re-constructing the game in Chinese? I could do the former easily enough with simple cut & paste of necessary changes WHERE necessary (I'm guessing here.... I've never done anything more than basic HTML in my life) but I doubt I could re-write the program into Chinese if that is what is it comes down to.

Answer that question --- and point me to a YouTube video that gives a basic understanding of what this would entail... if it's simply cut & paste.

I want to help... and I really think working the game into Chinese would be the better use of time....

Thoughts?

If you want translate Andor's Trail, see this web; log in and enjoy .
There are two tabs: "game content" which contains dialogues, name of items, monsters etc. and "user interface" which contains GUI.

BethelAbba wrote:Bounced this off of Zukero in a private message, but haven't heard back from him yet.

I happen to know he's rather busy right now, so I wouldn't read too much into that.

BethelAbba wrote:I initially offered to write dialogue based on my history in writing

There is a bit more to writing the dialogue than just writing. The dialogue has a specific structure, which is tied into the structure of the quest log. It's more like writing a play than prose, but of course good writing skills are a big plus for doing this. I personally think the hardest thing is coming up with the structure of the quest, and from there the structure of the quest dialogue and the structure of the quest log. But that's probably because although I'm also quite good at writing, it's all technical stuff. The problem I have with "creative writing" is mostly the "creative" bit, not the "writing" bit (which is not to say that my writing is that great, just that, like you, it's better than average).

BethelAbba wrote:My wife is Taiwanese, She is a teacher and fully capable of working with me towards making the game workable in this language.

My wife is from mainland China (Chengdu). If I volunteered her for a project like this, it would have consequences. I don't think they would be good ones

BethelAbba wrote:My real question here is --- does doing translation work only involve dialogue / items / button choices... or does it likewise involve the programming language and re-constructing the game in Chinese?

No programming is involved. There is more information about translations, and all other aspects relating to contributing to AT, here: http://andorstrail.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4560

BethelAbba wrote:Thoughts?

Be careful what you volunteer your significant other for?

Traditional Chinese translation would be awesome!

Tofu Ming wrote: ↑Tue Apr 14, 2020 8:37 am Traditional Chinese translation would be awesome!

If you have knowledge of Chinese then you could help translating. It is all webbased and everyone can do it: https://hosted.weblate.org/translate/an ... translated

Gonk wrote: ↑Tue Apr 14, 2020 8:26 pm

Tofu Ming wrote: ↑Tue Apr 14, 2020 8:37 am Traditional Chinese translation would be awesome!

If you have knowledge of Chinese then you could help translating. It is all webbased and everyone can do it: https://hosted.weblate.org/translate/an ... translated

Thank you Gonk, I'm looking at the link right now and will help out as much as can! This translation page looks very easy to participate in, I didn't it would be so easy to help out. As long as the Traditional Chinese is done the simplified Chinese version can be done by a program that simplifies the all characters.

Tofu Ming wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:57 am As long as the Traditional Chinese is done the simplified Chinese version can be done by a program that simplifies the all characters.

Just ask me if you need any help. It would be good to start with the gane UI. If you signup you can add the translations without further checks and they wll bw part of the next release. Without signing up you can only make suggestions. But noone of us could verify them. So better signup.

Can you tell me more about the automatic transformation of traditional to simplified? Can this be done by google translate as well?

I've heard that the automatic translations usually need some proofreading after, as there is not always a 1 to 1 correspondence between trad and simplified. But perhaps there are programs that can do a better job by looking at context than just by straight substitutions. How does that go nowadays, TM?

Gonk wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:55 pm

Tofu Ming wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2020 7:57 am As long as the Traditional Chinese is done the simplified Chinese version can be done by a program that simplifies the all characters.

Just ask me if you need any help. It would be good to start with the gane UI. If you signup you can add the translations without further checks and they wll bw part of the next release. Without signing up you can only make suggestions. But noone of us could verify them. So better signup.

Can you tell me more about the automatic transformation of traditional to simplified? Can this be done by google translate as well?

Thank you again! I've signed up now and will try to help more. There is automatic direct translation for Traditional/Simplified Chinese Character, because simplified characters are just another way to write the Traditional version - a simplified version of the original Traditional character, google translate and any other program can do it easily, but which Chinese characters(Traditional or Simplified) make the most sense will ultimately depend on which Chinese Dialect is preferred. The most common Chinese Dialect because of the Communists is of course Mandarin, with other dialects like Cantonese dominating in places like Hong Kong and most Chinatowns worldwide where Communist influence can't force them to all learn and use Mandarin.

Traditional is the original way to write Chinese Characters and every Simplified Character is derived from a Traditional one and mean the same thing is written different, so it's better to do a Traditional version first since it can easily be switched into simplified by any translation program.

Tomcat wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 1:59 am I've heard that the automatic translations usually need some proofreading after, as there is not always a 1 to 1 correspondence between trad and simplified. But perhaps there are programs that can do a better job by looking at context than just by straight substitutions. How does that go nowadays, TM?

Yep, that's because even though all Chinese Dialects use the same characters to read/write/speak/etc whether Traditional/Simplified, there are over 100 Chinese Dialects and each dialect prefers certain character over others and uses different slangs etc, so for Andor Trail to reach the biggest market Mandarin would be the obvious dialect to translate to first. Mainland China and Taiwan all use Mandarin for official language as do many other countries like Singapore etc plus Hong Kong and every Chinese school worldwide teaches Mandarin Dialect since it's taken over so many places.

As for Traditional or Simplified, I say do Traditional first since it's easy as a push of a button to switch to Simplified, and Traditional characters show the original meaning better anyways - like writing out the whole English word usually expresses it better than the abbreviation.

Lots of things get lots in translation so proof reading is definitely needed no matter what dialect, lots of kung fu movies don't make sense from reading the subtitles and we don't want Andor Trail to end up like that - a kung fu movie masterpiece ruined by bad subtitle translations.

I going to translate to Cantonese dialect with Traditional characters because that what I know best, but at the same time I can do bit Mandarin dialect too since I seen I can do that with this translation program. I not sure which translation programs can use context to translate better, but I like Pleco app best for Chinese translation apps I think it has best context choices for translating into Mandarin and Cantonese dialects.

For example I'll never translate proper names like Andor and city names because there just no way to do it except finding Character that might by fluke have a similar sound - and that just creates nonsense word combinations that make no sense except that it was put together to form a weird foreign sound, I've kept the English names in my translation.

I've translated Andor's Trail into Andor的行跡, because Andor's Trail is like following his footsteps or tracks I thought instead of his path or road.